[An Nahar] At least 131 people were killed as bombings, festivities and air strikes shook Syria on Tuesday, a rights watchdog said.

In the capital Damascus...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti..., gunnies shot and killed the brother of Syria's parliament speaker as he drove to work, the state-run news agency...and if you can't believe the state-run news agency who can you believe?... reported.

It was the latest in a wave of liquidations targeting Syrian officials, army officers and other prominent supporters of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-AssadOppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...'s regime.

Four of the president's top security aides were killed in a rebel bombing of state security headquarters in Damascus on July 18, including the defense minister and Assad's brother-in-law.

The SANA news agency said Mohammed Osama Laham, brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham, was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan.

In the latest in a wave of kabooms, at least 10 non-combatants were killed and 40 maimed as three blasts hit the west Damascus suburb of Qudsaya on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"At least 10 non-combatants were killed and more than 40 maimed, some at death's door, when three improvised bombs detonated in the working-class district of Waroud in the suburb of Qudsaya," the Britannia-based watchdog said.

State news agency SANA also reported casualties from a bombing in the area, without giving an exact toll.

Meanwhile,...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had escaped from his bonds and overwhelmed this guard using the bludgeon the faithful Filomena had smuggled to him in the loaf of bread... rebels ambushed a military convoy in Idlib province, their stronghold in the northwest, killing at least 12 troops and wounding 20, the Observatory said.

"At least 12 regime troops were killed and at least 20 maimed by improvised bombs, gunfire and mortar rounds that targeted their trucks, bus and armored personnel carriers near the town of Mohambal," the watchdog said.

The ambush triggered heavy fighting... as opposed to the more usual light or desultory fighting... around the town, which was hit by three air strikes, the Observatory added.

The festivities came after a rebel car boom killed 50 pro-regime fighters at a military post in the central province of Hama on Monday.

A bomb went kaboom! before dawn in the city of Mudamiya near the capital, causing injuries and significant damage, the Observatory said.

A second rigged vehicle exploded Tuesday morning in the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, causing damage but no casualties according to the Observatory, which relies on a countrywide network of activists and medics.

Also on Tuesday, the regime renewed air strikes across the country, dropping two bombs in the heart of Douma northeast of the capital, and hitting targets in the northern province of Aleppo...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... and the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.

Seven civilians died in air strikes on the central town of Houla, the site of a massacre in which 108 people, the majority women and kiddies, were killed in May.

Warplanes also bombarded the northwestern Idlib town of Maaret al-Numan, seized by rebels nearly a month ago, while fighting broke out around the nearby military base at Wadi Daif and near the town of Jisr al-Shughour.

The embattled regime of Assad has increasingly relied on its air power to try and fight back rebel gains on the ground.

Fighting was also raging in northern commercial hub Aleppo, where two rebels were killed, while another two died in Homs city, the Britannia-based Observatory said.